Paxos Accidentally Minted $300 Trillion of PayPal’s Stablecoin — Then Burned It

Stablecoin issuer Paxos revealed that it erroneously minted $300 trillion worth of PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin on Wednesday, only to reverse the mistake minutes later by burning the excess ￰1￱ records visible on Etherscan confirmed the flurry of minting and burning transactions, exposing a rare but dramatic “fat-finger” error in the reportedly tightly controlled world of stablecoin ￰2￱ transactions revealed that the firm had accidentally added six extra zeros during ￰3￱ minutes, Paxos destroyed the incorrectly issued $300 trillion PYUSD and re-minted the correct amount of $300m instead. Paxos( @Paxos ) accidentally minted 300T $PYUSD 7 hours ago — they added six extra zeros by mistake!

The error was quickly corrected as they burned the 300T $PYUSD and properly re-minted 300M $PYUSD instead. ￰0￱ ￰4￱ — Lookonchain (@lookonchain) October 16, 2025 Stablecoin Issuers Have Faced Similar Minting Mishaps Before Such mistakes are not rare in crypto. Often, token transfers sent to the wrong address cannot be reversed. However, stablecoin issuers have more ￰5￱ can step in to correct errors, such as by returning or burning tokens created by mistake. Paxos’s blunder echoes past industry ￰6￱ 2019, Tether mistakenly issued about $5b in USDT and later burned the ￰7￱ May 2021, BlockFi accidentally credited users with vast amounts of Bitcoin instead of a promotional stablecoin, forcing complicated ￰8￱ in Dec. 2022, a DeversiFi upgrade glitch triggered a $23.7m Ethereum gas payout, which developers mostly recovered with community ￰9￱ Tighten Grip On Crypto Ecosystem These incidents show how fragile crypto’s plumbing can be, especially when automated systems handle large-scale ￰10￱ of mid-October 2025, the stablecoin sector’s market cap stood near $306.18b, up about 47% year to ￰11￱ growth leans heavily on major players like Tether’s USDT (holding around 59% market share) and Circle’s ￰12￱ USD (PYUSD), though smaller, commands ￰13￱ of Oct. 2025, its market cap is about $2.32b, matching its token supply of 2.32b, with trading prices tightly anchored near $0.9997.